Nano science for new advanced metal-hydrogen systems towards applications

The advent of nanoscience and nanotechnology has contributed to an increased understanding of our nature as well as to the posibility to make better and more functional materials. In the field of metal hydrides and metal-hydrogen systems, nanostructuring has proven to be a viable method for increasing benificial characteristics such as the kinetics of hydrogen uptake and release, lowering of hydrogen desorption temperatures, increasing stability of the system against degradation during cycling, as well as improving the systems tolerance against impurities and unwanted oxidations. An important focus of the present proposal is to achieve a basic knowledge of how functional materials can be favourably modified by an application of hydrogen processing routes. Here a modification of the conditions of H treatment can lead to a programmed response in properties, depending on the microstructure of the nanocrystalline building blocks and the interfaces between the crystallites. In this project, materials specially designed for application in hydrogen storage and compression will be synthesised and characterised, both in respect of hydrogenation properties, kinetics and impurity resistance, as well as at microscopic scales using electron microscopy, average structu ral and phase transformation characteristics utilising both neutron and synchrotron XRD powder diffraction techniques, in-situ and ex-situ and through development of new experimental techniques based on vibrational frequensy measurements.